THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Art is all about intuition and a result of a potpourri of experiences and experiments, according to Sreegopan B S, a contemporary artist who follows a semi-abstract style and explains that he draws inspiration from what he ‘’sees, reads and hears.’’
What sets apart this 47-year-old, a lecturer in painting in Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady, is that even with 25 years of experience in academics, he has never given his passion a rest and has marked himself in the contemporary art scene with a body of artwork spanning as many years.
For Sreegopan, art was always part of his life. He was always dabbling in colours ever since he could remember and it didn’t take long for him to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. Sreegopan, who did his BFA from College of Fine Arts, says that it was the brilliant teachers there who helped him. After doing his MFA, he received a cultural scholarship from Ministry for Human Resource Development. ‘’That was the turning point in my life. I could experiment and work more in my paintings,” he adds. After that, awards and recognition poured in from different quarters.
For someone who was raised in close proximity to environment, in a place surrounded by hills, nature loomed large in his childhood memories. Today, he incorporates it in his paintings. Although human life forms formed an integral part of his earlier works, environment has now completely taken over his canvas. “Now, it’s like an obsession. We don’t have many painters concentrating on environmental issues and I intend to experiment more in that,” he adds. And one can see his fixation by looking at how his paintings speak volumes about environment. The blush of colours, the confident brushstrokes and myriad patterns weave countless stories in his paintings. He had recently held a solo exhibition titled ‘Retrospective thoughts’ in the city which focused on environment, garnering appreciation from all quarters, where he used just leaves to represent environmental issues.
Asked whether his teaching career tears him away from his artwork, pat comes the reply. “Teaching has only helped, if anything! You get a lot of inputs from the students and that in turn helps us all,” he says. The only change he has made in his artwork is that he depends on acrylic media more at present as it saves time when compared to mixed media, which he earlier used. The artist’s face flushes with pride as he says that along with his own works, those of his students were also selected by Lalithakala Akademi for its state annual exhibition.
Sreegopan adds that he often draws inspiration from his childhood memories; like the painting ‘The butcher’s trap’ for which recognition came all the way from London when he bagged ‘Commonwealth Award’ instituted by Royal Overseas League. Though the art scenario is looking up, there is a need for cultural exchange, he says.
The artist, who has conducted close to 100 exhibitions, has only one dream now. And that is to conduct more exhibitions and see the original works of the painters whom he admires. “I hope that one day I will get to see the original works of Van Gogh, Picasso, Max Beckmann to name a few,” he adds with a smile.